Maxwell Burgess may emerge as Premier Sir John Swan's heir apparent.

The "Government-in-waiting'' will have to wait a little longer. To form a Government, the Progressive Labour Party needed to hold onto the 15 seats it went into the October 5 General Election with and had to pick up seven new ones. Up until a week before Bermudians went to the polls they were confident of being able to do just that. Overconfident as things turned out.

On Polling Day the PLP won five seats but lost two for a net gain of three.

The United Bermuda Party, which won 23 seats in the 1989 election, emerged from what party insiders are calling "Black Tuesday'' with 22 seats - they lost four and picked up three for a net loss of one.

With National Liberal Party leader Gilbert Darrell and lone Independent MP Stuart Hayward both losing their seats, 18 PLP MPs will sit across the aisle from 22 UBP members when the new Parliament convenes. That equals the PLP's best-ever previous showing in 1980 but it wasn't good enough to allow them onto the Government benches for the first time.

The party UBP maverick Harry Viera has often referred to as the "once-and-future Opposition'' proved unable to throw off its reputation as a perpetual also-ran for the eighth successive time.

"My reaction? In three words - disappointment, disappointment, disappointment,'' said a PLP stalwart close to the party's election strategy.

"It was our election to lose and that's precisely what we did. We did well but not well enough.

"I'm not trying to downplay our very real achievements on Election Day. But when all the dust settles, when the jubilation among our supporters dies down, it will become readily apparent that we could have done a whole lot better than we did.

"We could have won, for one thing.'' There are a number of PLP members and supporters who believe if there had been a change in leadership after the 1989 election ("Let's face it, Fred Wade doesn't exactly exude personality,'' said one), the PLP could have fulfilled its campaign vow to "X-change'' the Government.

But the PLP insider RG spoke to wasn't entirely convinced by this argument: "My dad was a great football fan and he used to take me to games with him when I was a kid. Whenever I started going on about the goals our team had almost scored, he would say to me: `A miss is as good as a mile.' That holds true of politics as well. A miss is as good as a mile. So it's no good saying we could have put the ball in the back of the net if only we'd done X, Y and Z. The fact is that we did miss.'' The PLP's strategy was based on picking up a second seat in the former United Bermuda Party stronghold of St. George's North, where Education spokesman Jennifer Smith had ousted Gladwin (Doc) Hall in 1989; winning one seat in St.

George's North, where UBP incumbent Grace Pitcher Bell was seen as particularly vulnerable to PLP newcomer Arthur Pitcher; taking both seats in Hamilton East where UBP incumbent T. Haskins (Hackie) Davis was stepping down and National Liberal Party leader Gilbert Darrell was considered weak; sweeping the two Warwick West seats by teaming George Scott with the fiery Dr.

Ewart Brown in a constituency UBP stalwarts Sir John Sharpe and Quinton Edness usually won by paper-slim margins; and in Warwick East unseating former Education Minister Gerald Simons, who went into the election still plagued by fall-out from Government's bungled school restructuring plan.

The PLP also thought they had a real chance of winning at least one seat in Southampton West where longtime UBP members Ralph Marshall and Harry Viera had stepped aside, opening a perceived window of opportunity for Michael Scott - who polledrespectably there in 1989 - and running mate Terry Lister, the Opposition's backroom eminence grise.

And if it was a particularly good day, the PLP saw Independent Stuart Hayward sloughing off enough UBP votes for either Neletha Butterfield or Phillip Perinchief to come down the middle and take one of the two Pembroke West Central seats.

As things turned out, their calculations weren't that far off the mark. They took the second seat in St. George's North, picked up both in Hamilton East and won one each in Warwick East and West.

It seems likely that if NLP candidate Cheryl Pooley hadn't drawn 300 votes in St. George's South, the PLP would have won Bell's seat as well.

And if the disaffected UBP supporters who unseated Deputy Premier Dr.

Clarence James in favour of Mr. Hayward in 1989 had not marched to the polling station in lock-step behind the Ann Cartwright DeCouto erome Dill ticket (pushing the Independent to a disastrous fifth place finish), the PLP could have taken one or both seats in that constituency.

The only constituency where the PLP's arithmetic proved to be completely wrong was Southampton West, where the Scott ister team performed competently - but no better.

Then there was Hamilton West.

Up until Election Day, the PLP was confident of being able to retain the seats controversial lawyer Julian Hall and Bermuda Public Services Association president Eugene Blakeney took from the UBP in 1989.

Never mind the infamous "drugs tape'' transcript; never mind the sometimes inflammatory speeches in the House of Assembly; never mind his well publicised business difficulties. The PLP thought Julian Hall was untouchable.

"Hamilton West came as a complete shock,'' said the PLP insider. "No question about it. We had given some thought to the possibility of Blakeney being beaten there but - in all honesty - we anticipated Julian would top the poll.'' At the end of the day, Hall came bottom by more than 100 votes.

"Look, we'd be the first to admit Julian Hall is no angel,'' said one PLP insider, laughing. "But what the UBP never understood about him is that he was the closest thing to a Teflon Parliamentarian the PLP had. They could throw as much dirt as they liked at him - none of it stuck, at least not as far as most people in the black community were concerned.'' Sir John Swan himself once said that as far as Julian Hall's spectacular 1982 bankruptcy was concerned, some blacks felt the only thing he did wrong was not take enough money from the Front Street establishment.

"Julian is seen, first and foremost, as a martyr,'' said the PLP source.

"Black Bermudians are prepared to forgive him his trespasses because they see him as a victim of Front Street, one who still isn't afraid of standing up to them.

"They remember when he was the UBP's golden boy, when they were grooming him as a future leader; they remember when the banks were tripping over themselves to lend him money; and the perception is how everyone turned on him as soon as he broke ranks with the governing party.

"A lot of Julian's problems have been of his own making. Blacks aren't stupid - they know that. But folks are still prepared to cheer him on because he does and says things to Front Street that a lot of them have always dreamed of doing and saying. It's that simple.'' What, then, proved to be the charismatic Hall's undoing in Hamilton West? "In the final analysis, it was the simple fact he didn't get out there and work that constituency,'' said the PLP insider. "Bermudian politics is still largely parochial; people like to feel they know their MPs, that they're working on behalf of the local community. But I think a policeman had to give Julian directions to find Hamilton Parish when he was made a candidate there in 1989. Even after four years, he probably still needed a map and a compass to get there. And people down there resented that.'' The fact UBP candidates Maxwell Burgess - who lost his seat in Hamilton West in 1989 - and Francis Furbert had worked the constituency virtually non-stop for the last four years didn't do anything to improve the PLP incumbents' chances, either.

"Lack of work did Julian in, nothing else,'' said the PLP source. "And, unfortunately, he took Blakeney down with him. We were not expecting that, not at all.'' Race, the issue that normally dares not speak its name in the run-up to Bermudian elections, fairly bellowed this time.

The PLP - which saw its share of the popular vote go from 37 percent in 1989 to 46 per cent this year - entirely credits an increase in black racial solidarity for this remarkable surge.

Ironically, the PLP certainly did not play the race card; they didn't have to - the UBP had effectively done it for them when the Government-commissioned report on the Bermudian criminal justice system was published earlier this year.

"Race was certainly a determinant in this election,'' said the PLP insider.

"The Tumim Report helped us. How could it not when it basically confirmed most of what we've been saying about `institutional' racism for the last 25 years? "And the fact the UBP used what were perceived as thinly-disguised racial slurs against us during the campaign - questioning our business competence, our ability to `manage' - obviously backfired on them.'' However, there is a flip-side to the race question that disturbs some in the PLP.

"We didn't attract much - if any - of the white vote,'' said one PLP strategist. "Whites still tend to see us as this Black Power boogeyman, this caricature of radical Sixties black militancy, not a viable alternative to the UBP.

"It won't be easy for us to ever form a Government if we don't start making some inroads there - at least not a Government that commands the respect of a representative cross-section of Bermudians.'' Another PLP insider said although race was undoubtedly a factor in the party's Election Day rally, widespread restlessness with the quarter-century lock on power enjoyed by the UBP may have played just as important a role.

"There really were no great gulfs between the UBP and the PLP on approaches to the major issues going into this election - not on crime, not on the recession and not even on race when you come right down to it.

"Personally, I think the prevailing sentiment on Election Day was: `These guys in the PLP aren't that bad. The other fellows have been in Government for 25 years, let's give the PLP a chance.' Unfortunately for us, this sentiment wasn't quite prevalent enough.'' Tell that to a bloodied United Bermuda Party which is still licking its wounds, wondering not what went wrong with its campaign but whether anything in fact actually went right.

The consensus of opinion in the UBP camp is that the party placed too much dependence on American media consultant Bob Squire and the polls produced by longtime pollster Doug Schoen of the New York firm Penn & Schoen.

"Bob Squire was an `expert'. He had worked on Bill Clinton's campaign, so of course he knew what he was talking about,'' said one bitter UBP insider. "You know the way some Bermudians prostrate themselves in front of any foreigner who pulls a fancy, embossed business card from his wallet? Well, most of those Bermudians are in the UBP.

"Squire couldn't do anything wrong - and, in their view, the Bermudians working on the campaign couldn't do anything right.'' Squire came up with the "Blueprint for the Future'', basically a slick variation on a standard party platform around which the entire UBP TV and newspaper advertising campaign was built.

The PLP's Alex Scott described the resulting media blitz as "antiseptic'', an assessment many in the UBP wholeheartedly agree with.

"The only thing our campaign was good for was curing insomnia,'' said the UBP insider. "The `Blueprint for the Future' wasn't the centrepiece of our campaign, it was our campaign.

"It was basically the same campaign we ran in 1983, 1985 and 1989, complete with Sir John Swan as a kind of UBP poster boy. With all due respect to the Premier, this kind of Presidential-style approach has obviously started to wear pretty thin with the voters.'' A veteran UBP MP, now retired, said the party ran a technically efficient but uninspiring campaign, one that never fired the electorate's imagination. "God knows, you just couldn't get excited about the UBP this time around'' he said.

"Every time one of their TV commercials came on, I was reminded of a mashed potato sandwich - which is about the blandest thing I can think of.

"The UBP campaigned as if it had had a charismatic bypass. The party reminded me of one of those rats you find in school science labs, the kind that have been encased in blocks of lucite: from a distance they look alive but when you get close up you see what you're actually dealing with is a perfectly preserved - but very dead - animal.

"The UBP isn't dead yet but God knows it's on life support. The voters have given them a four-year stay of execution but unless there are some significant changes, I think the UBP will be history after the next election.'' At least one major change is all but certain. Sir John Swan, who has led the UBP for more than a decade, is widely expected to leave office before the end of his current term. Newly elected MP Pamela Gordon and Maxwell Burgess - the giant-killer of Hamilton West - are widely tipped as two of his likeliest successors, with Burgess enjoying perhaps a slight edge.

Prior to the election, the conventional wisdom at UBP headquarters on Chancery Lane was that if the party made any gains on Polling Day, Gordon would almost automatically be assured of being Sir John's heir apparent.

A successful career woman, a single mother, the daughter of trade union pioneer Dr. E.F.Gordon, she projected precisely the image the UBP wanted to take it into the 21st century.

"However, the fact is we lost four constituencies and our share of the popular vote remained stalled at 50 percent,'' said the former MP. "I don;t think the party can afford to take a gamble on Pam Gordon at this stage. Give her a few years in Cabinet and she'll be unbeatable: all the right ingredients are there.

"But Max is what they need right now. He's a scrappy little political pit-bull with tremendous cross-over appeal. The man can transcend racial, generational and social line sin a way veryu few Bermudian politicians can.

"Max Burgess has the shrewdest political instincts in Bermuda, period. He knows what it's like to lose and he knows how much hard work is required to win. The UBP would be crazy not to go with Max as the next Premier. He's got fire in his belly - a real passion for politics that few of his UBP colleagues share.'' Between 1985 and 1989, when the UBP enjoyed a 31-seat majority and what was known as the "Imperial Premiership'' prevailed, Maxwell Burgess's name became synonymous with the perceived arrogance of Government.

"The voters sent Max a message in 1989 and he lost his seat,'' continued the retired MP. "As Minister of Youth and Sport, he had to carry the can for the Commonwealth Games and National Stadium fiascos.

"That loss knocked the stuffing - and the cockiness - out of Max. He could have been forgiven if he had just dropped out of politics altogether at that point, most poeple would have. It took a lot of guts to step back into the ring.

"When an opening came up in the Senate, he went for it and performed commendably there. And to go on and win back a consitituency he'd lost takes some doing - Bermudians have long memories, after all.

"I think that not only has Max rehabilitated hismelf as far as the public's concerned, but he was the only member of the UBP to emerge as something of a hero when the election was over.

"Christ, we were only able to form a Government because of him.'' Still, there are those in the PLP who remain phlegmatic about their party's chances at the next election regardless of what does or does not happen inside the UBP.

"Even if we had held onto Hamilton West at this election, the result would have been 20-20 - a hung Parliament,'' said the PLP insider. "That would have meant another General Election sooner rather than later.

"And if that had happened, I wouldn't have been surprised if Bermudians - faced for the first time in more than a generation with the possibility of real political change - had gone scurrying back to the UBP. Bermudians are basically hostile to change - meaningful, profound change. If they weren't, the PLP would have formed a Government long ago.

"I'm pleased about the gains we made this time but as far as the future is concerned, I'd be lying if I said I thought victory was just over the horizon.

"We've probably got a few more years - and maybe a few more elections - to wait before we are the Government.'' Tim Hodgson is Editor of the Mid-Ocean News. This is his first article for RG Magazine.

*l PHOTO Left, Maxwell Burgess tipped the balance for the UBP. Now the hero of Hamilton West is tipped as a successor to leader Swan. Above first-time Rene Webb celebrates a PLP sweep in Hamilton East where she topped the poll. Above right, Freddie Wade's lack of personality hurt the PLP. Right, Graeme Outerbridge's expression sums up a disastrous election for the NLP.

NOVEMBER 1993 RG MAGAZINE